


Girltalk

by RosiePaw



Category: Temeraire - Novik
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:28:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosiePaw/pseuds/RosiePaw





	Girltalk

The three female dragons watched the scarlet speck vanish southeastward with little surprise and much hilarity.

"Messoria, this is all your fault! Surprising her with the news like that…" gasped Dulcia, between snorts.

"How was I to know she didn’t already know they’d left?" replied Messoria, with more amusement than indignation. "Or that she’d got so set on such a silly notion? And anyway, it’s really Temeraire’s fault, the young idiot."

Lily, hardly a year older than Temeraire, considered this statement cautiously. "I’m not sure I see how it’s Temeraire’s fault. He can’t help being young."

"He could work harder at not being an idiot, Lily. Remember in Africa when he insisted on trying to rescue our captains and crews all by himself? And all he did instead was to get captured and give us twice as much work, because then we had to rescue him _and_ the humans? We should have just left him there to figure out how to escape on his own."

"Except Laurence wouldn’t have consented to being rescued without him," Lily pointed out, "And Catherine and Chenery wouldn’t have consented to leaving Laurence behind, and then the crews…"

"Hmmm," rumbled Messoria, "Leaving Laurence behind wouldn’t have been completely unfair. That’s whom Temeraire got most of his ideas from. Duty and honour and defending England and all that."

"Aren’t we all defending England?" asked Lily.

"Of course we are, dear," Dulcia reassured her, "It’s just that the rest of us don’t make such a fuss about it."

***

"Fuss" was a good word for what had greeted them when they returned from Africa. Fuss about getting the cure distributed throughout the coverts, preferably _before_ anyone else died of the plague. Fuss about arrangements for the hatching of Catherine’s egg, which seemed to involve a great deal _more_ fuss for a human than it would for a dragon. And then a completely unexpected source of fuss: Laurence getting arrested for treason and Temeraire being sent to Pen Y Fan.

Lily was particularly uneasy on this last point. After all, she and Maximus had sworn a pact with Temeraire that if _any_ of their captains was ever in danger of being hanged for treason, they would help each other escape. Except that if Temeraire wanted to escape, why had he even brought Laurence back to England in the first place? Why hadn’t he just turned around and flown in the opposite direction, for China? For _months_ they’d been listening to him going on about how wonderful China was, and then when he actually had a reason to go there – besides pavilions – he came back to England instead.

Messoria was probably right when she called him a young idiot, at least about the idiot part.

Of course if Temeraire _had_ taken Laurence to China, Iskierka would have been even more insufferable. It was bad enough that she seemed to think that no one else was suitably impressed by the amount of capital she’d managed to accumulate. It certainly didn’t _help_ when Dulcia relayed Chenery’s opinion that Granby looked like a whore come into an inheritance. No one among the dragons was quite sure what an inheritance was – Lily’s explanation of Catherine’s explanation of Laurence’s explanation didn’t really make sense – but all of them had heard enough about whores from their crews to realize that Chenery was not being complimentary.

What made things even _worse_ was that Iskierka seemed to think that the entire voyage to Africa had been some sort of pleasure jaunt from which she’d been left out on purpose.

"Pleasure jaunt!" snorted Messoria angrily, as they basked and chatted after finishing off their cows, "I almost wish she’d had the plague herself, she’d know just how ‘pleasant’ that was!"

"Please, Messoria," said Dulcia, "I don’t even want to think about a Kazilik coughing and sneezing with the plague. Lily here was bad enough, and at least she was careful to aim for her sand tub. I’m not sure that Iskierka would have bothered."

The sharpness of the remark took Lily aback. "Oh, but she wouldn’t…"

"I’m not sure she wouldn’t, Lily. She’s not evil-minded, but she’s careless. I’ve been talking with Gherni and the other ferals – I asked the humans assigned to them to interpret for me. When they fly patrol with Iskierka, _they’re_ the ones who have to take care she doesn’t flame them accidentally. What it would be like to work in formation with her, let alone fight in a real battle… Well, that’s another thing I don’t want to think about."

"Start thinking," advised Messoria, "Sooner or later we’re going to be asked to. The French have been sniffing along the Channel for months. One of these days, they’re going to make a move, and then the Admiral won’t be able to afford _not_ to make use of our Kazilik, especially if Temeraire is still stuck in the breeding grounds."

The breeding grounds were another sore point. If Temeraire was fighting to defend England, Iskierka had to prove she was an even better fighter. If Temeraire had capital, Iskierka had to have more capital. If Temeraire had gone to Africa, Iskierka wanted to have gone to Africa. And if Temeraire was in the breeding grounds…

"So send her," was Messoria’s advice.

"Messoria! She’s not old enough." Lily wasn’t sure if Dulcia was really shocked or just pretending to be.

"That’s my point. Send her, scare the hell out of her and we might have some peace until she _is_ old enough."

"We also might have a valuable Kazilik who’s completely scared off breeding forever. And those stories you keep telling do _not_ help. Even if they’re true, which I don’t think even half of them _are_."

"Which ones don’t you think are true? The one about the Parnassian who…"

"Messoria," interjected Lily hastily, "I’m sure Dulcia doesn’t mean it." She’d heard the story the first time. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it again. She also wasn’t sure she _didn’t_ want to hear it again. It made her feel strange inside, and the knowing looks the two older females gave her – like the ones they were giving her right now – were _not_ helping.

But in the end, for all of Messoria’s jibes and tall tales, it was Dulcia who really went and stuck her claws in it.

***

 

The scarlet speck was out of sight now.

"Seven months there and seven months back," gloated Messoria.

"Unless they put her off at Gibraltar," Lily pointed out.

"Do you see her _letting_ them put her off at Gibraltar? I don’t. Yes, fourteen months _without_ her whining. Fourteen months _without_ having to worry about getting flamed by our own side. Getting flamed by the _other_ side is bad enough."

"How long do the doctors say before you can fly again?" asked Dulcia solicitously.

"Months." Messoria slipped from gloating to gloomy. "If they even know what they’re talking about, which I often doubt."

"Courage, dear. Fourteen months of being able to recover _in peace_. Consider what your recovery would have been like if she _hadn’t_ decided to chase after Temeraire."

"Ha!… Dulcia, did you put that idea into her head _on purpose_?"

"Me? How was I supposed to know how things would turn out? About the invasion, or you getting flamed at Shoeburyness, or about Temeraire and Laurence getting exiled to Australia?"

"Well, anyone could have guessed that sooner or later Temeraire and Laurence were going _somewhere_. They always are, to China or Istanbul or Africa or France. Temeraire and Laurence doing nothing but ordinary patrol duty for months at a time? Right, when pigs fly."

"Flying pigs, what a lovely thought. It would be so much fun hunting them! But I don’t see your point."

"You set Iskierka up so that when Temeraire finally went somewhere, she’d go after him."

Dulcia looked smug. Lily gasped. "Dulcia, you _didn’t_!"

"Certainly she did. Don’t let her name fool you, she’s only sweet on the outside. Dulcia, was that even true, about there being no eggs from any of Temeraire’s breedings?"

"Unfortunately, yes. I had the gossip from at least three different Winchesters, and Winchesters usually know what’s going on. It doesn’t surprise me. The circumstances were hardly ideal. He’s young, he’ll have better chances later on."

"Right, like the chance you set up to go chasing after him."

"Oh, she’s been chasing after him since the moment she was hatched!"

The two older females dissolved into a series of snorts. Lily was getting increasingly confused.

"Do you mean that Iskierka was hatched wanting to…"

Dulcia took pity on her. "Of course not, dear. Who is? But… Look, what do you remember about the weeks before you were hatched?"

"It was warm. It was boring. I spent a lot of time listening to the aviators in the baths complain about their training schedules and make extravagant plans for their next leaves."

"And when you _did_ hatch?"

"Well, I was started on learning signals right away. When I wasn’t eating or sleeping, of course. And then the moment I was strong enough to carry Catherine in flight, I was started on formation training."

"Precisely. Whereas Iskierka spent weeks listening to Temeraire tell her all sorts of romantic nonsense about honour and duty and defending England. And then when she finally _was_ hatched, she discovered that she wasn’t big enough to actually _do_ anything except let Temeraire haul her around like an extra piece of baggage. She’s been trying to make up for that ever since. Trying to prove that she can do anything Temeraire can do."

Lily was beginning to understand.

"That’s why you told her about eggs. About her being able to produce eggs, which males can’t do at all. And about how Temeraire hadn’t even managed to _sire_ an egg."

"Yes, dear. I thought it would calm her down to know there was something she could do that Temeraire couldn’t – besides breath fire, of course, which doesn’t seem to count with her because he can do that wind thing and she can’t. Except it didn’t calm her down, it just made her more of a nuisance than ever, all those questions about how can one tell what a dragonet’s going to be like before it’s hatched. As if one ever _can_ tell, with crossbreeds! And I don’t see us getting a male Kazilik any time soon, not now that the Sultan’s allied with the French. Anyway, I did my best, trying to explain how _usually_ a dragonet shows traits from both parents, but one can never tell _exactly_ how the traits are going to mix together. But she went on and _on_, and I really was getting quite annoyed…"

"Some of us were already well past ‘quite annoyed,’" put in Messoria.

"So that’s when I told her…"

"That’s when you told her that, just as an example, if she had an egg with Temeraire, the hatchling might have both fire and the Divine Wind. And you told her that on purpose so that she’d go chasing off after him the next time he and Laurence left England."

Lily sounded indignant, but Messoria and Dulcia had, after all, been young themselves once. They gave her some time to think about it before Messoria spoke up.

"A sheep for your thoughts, Lily."

"I think… I think if he falls for it, he _is_ a young idiot. But what I _really_ want to know is…"

"Hmmm?"

"Who’s going to explain all this when Excidium asks why Iskierka left?"

This time all three female dragons dissolved.


End file.
